Birth Control For Men Is Now Closer Than Ever

Researchers have finally found a way to make male birth control pills a reality.

By
Cosmo Frank

Dec 04, 2013

From diaphragms to pills, most methods of birth control require some kind of commitment from the woman while the man just gets to show up. Researchers believe they've found a way to change that by (to put this in clinical terms) stopping sperm from coming out of men's balls when they cum (via Mashable). Previous efforts attempted to stop the production of sperm in the testes, which hasn't yielded any results.

It's this challenge of decommissioning thousands of sperm versus a single egg, coupled with the difficulty of delivering drugs to the testes, that has made an effective male birth control solution so difficult to produce. However, by forcing the vas deferens to contract, this drug would prevent sperm from leaving the testes, thus preventing any chance of fertilization. Once the user wanted to try for a pregnancy, they could simply stop taking the pill.

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The drug is still a long way off from completion. All of this is based on breeding mice to genetically replicate the effects of the pill, so you're not going to be able to pick this up at your local drugstore any time soon. There's also the risk of long-term side effects, like permanent infertility and a whole host of other issues.

As a guy, it's difficult for me to get excited for this. I'm happy for men to have an alternative to the birth control out there now, and to give couples more options that don't force the obligation on the woman. But as with any new advance, and especially any advance involving my genitals, I won't be one of the first people lining up to pop these pills. Even if short-term side effects become successfully marginalized, there won't be an easy way to determine the drug's long-term safety for years. Plus, the researchers had this to say: "A lack of ejaculate has the potential to be disconcerting." Ok, thanks, science! Hit me up in twenty years.